I’m totally thrilled that I’ve been invited to join the Unusual Historicals blog! I love how they concentrate on a theme per month like “Food” and you can go to learn just a fascinating array of information from different cultures and time periods. With history (and I suspect most things), the more you learn outside of your sphere of expertise, the more cross-connections you can make, and the richer your experience becomes. I suppose that way of thinking may come from my cognitive science background.
Since the Golden Heart® award ceremony so many authors have contacted me to tell me how inspirational it is to see an unusual setting break into the historical romance market. This is premature. I mean, the book isn’t even near the shelf yet! But people have told me about their struggles writing in WWII or Italy or 17th century France.
Wow! I never thought so many people would connect to my writing adventures. Who would have thought that a western setting, something that would seem familiar to readers, could also be such a difficult sale? Apparently, many people feel that if you’re not writing a Western or a Regency, you might as well be writing in, say, medieval China!
I’m still scared to death.
There I said it. I feel like I’m fighting to stay alive now with every word because there’s so many more unknowns. I’ve heard “no market”, “risky”, “too difficult” so many times in this journey. But I hope that in this case, “No market” could possibly mean, “Untapped market.”
I had to fly from the conference in D.C. directly to Vegas. On the surface it sounds glamorous, but I want nothing more than to be home right now. I feel like I’ll never sleep again and my feet hurt like heck from running around in cute shoes. By the last day of RWA, I decided my conference bunny days were over and it was flip flop time.
Everyone is doing conference wrap-ups. I wish I had enough time to focus enough to get my thoughts together. Not to mention grabbing pictures from everyone! So excuse this mish-mosh of a conference vignette. Please know it’s a good representation of what’s in my head right now. Hey, take a gander at the stage setup for the RITA/GH® awards. It really is like the Academy Awards of romance!
Highlight of my conference? The moment that really made it hit home for me was telling Jade Lee about my sale. Jade is one of my favorite authors and an inspiration to me. I even brought my copy of The Concubine with me to get signed. (I’m wearing a Jade Lee tiger T-shirt now as I type!) A couple of friends got me a picture with her after the awards ceremony.
Aftermath of conference: I can’t catch up with the e-mails. There’s a flood of congratulations, info about loops I need to join, conference gushing. I definitely need to get this under control!
StatCounter: A pox upon you Lisa and Laura! I signed up for StatCounter a couple of weeks ago and it’s like crack, soma and substance-D all rolled into one. This is probably no big deal to anyone who’s been blogging for a while, but as of Saturday, I seem to have gone international! I know exactly why. It’s largely because of fellow Harlequin author Michelle Styles and links on e-harlequin. Apparently, many authors of unusual historicals were cheering for me when I gave my acceptance speech about selling a historical romance set in China.
I need to print out the next chapters of The Dragon and the Pearl so badly. I told my agent it would be done in two weeks. That was before I knew how crazy things would get and that I’d have to go to Vegas to handle some paperwork.
Am I going to gamble in Vegas? Probably not. No girl can be that lucky all at once.
As of this morning, 10:57am EST, Butterfly Swords, has been sold to Harlequin Mills & Boon.
I’m at RWA national conference, among friends, among many of the people who helped me get here. This couldn’t have happened at any better time. Many, many more stories later.
Kudos to Lisa & Dara who may have noticed that I also quoted The Pursuit of Happyness when I signed with my agent. Last Friday was the day I first received the offer.
Set in the Han dynasty, this movie centers around the high drama of the Battle of Red Cliff, the definitive showdown between three warlords that ushered in the Three Kingdoms period. The battle and characters were romanticized in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the scope of this movie is breathtaking.
This movie has already been released in China, Australia and international markets to mega-blockbuster returns. It’s been compared to The Lord of the Rings. The U.S. release is scheduled for later this year, but I haven’t been able to hunt down an exact date.
I can’t wait to see it in the theatres here. Other than being a fan of Tony Leung and a sucker for the epic, sweeping historical, I’m also hoping this is another sign that mainstream audiences are ready for Asian historical romances. *fingers crossed*
Larger than life characters, intrigue, and lines like “The thought of going to battle against you is unbearable.” This is the sort of passion that inspired my stories.
I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Made huge gains on fixing structural issues with The Dragon and the Pearl and so I’m allowing myself to peek into the blogosphere. *waves hello*
I can take most critique without batting an eye. Fix dialogue, layer in more sexual tension, need more emotion, need more conflict — it’s all the cost of entry. Even deleting complete scenes doesn’t phaze me. But what scares me to death and keeps me up at night are structural issues. The “this is not working” comments which mean you need to spend some time soul searching and then go medieval on your manuscript.
I spent the last week cutting major arteries and then trying to graft them back together. When it’s all done, all you can do is shock the heart and hope it beats again.
I think I hear a weak pulse. Need to nurse this baby back to health now. Be back soon for more random musings.
Already I have a major change — Got a great title suggestion from chaptermate Elizabeth Grayson. Silk and Seduction is going to morph into The Dragon and the Pearl. Isn’t that snazzy? I’m very bad with title-fu so I’m sending cyber-kisses out to Elizabeth. *mwah* *mwah* I just lucked out with “Butterfly Swords”.
I finally got up the courage to open up Little Sis’ package with my manuscript for “D and P” inside. All in all, she was a lot harder on Butterfly first time around, so I’m feeling a little better. Sure she envisions rewriting everything after the midpoint on. *sigh* Got work to do.
It got me to thinking. Even though I don’t plan on putting in all the fixes she suggests verbatim, they’re each telling me something is missing there — whether it be conflict or characterization. Sometimes it’s a huge structural change, like I know I need some sort of milestone that the heroine and hero both achieve together in Chapters 12-14. It’s absent now. And some are 1-2 lines here and there, like evolving the relationship with each chapter.
That’s how I take all critiques. On the first level, the issue is “this is not working” and then the specific details give me clues about what might work. But even if I don’t agree with the clues, it doesn’t take away the fact that something needs to change. I think writers often stop listening when they don’t like the suggested tweaks.
Even though I rely heavily on Little Sis and other readers, in the end the revision comes down to very personal decisions. I’m reminded of a Tyson Beckford quote from Bravo’s “Make me a Supermodel”. (I confess, I watch trashy reality tv.)
Paraphrased, like all my quotes:
“A good model does what the cameraman wants them to do. A supermodel gives him something he didn’t even know he wanted.”
I just caught wind of a movie that’s supposed to coming out August 2009 called “Warrior’s Way” starring Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush and Dong-Kun Jang. It’s an “East meets West” flick with martial arts sword fighting in the Wild West.
Okay, it looks a little choppy here. The effects were rough and the romance…hmmm…probably not.
I always become hopeful when a big action movie like this hits American theater. Kate Bosworth and Geoffrey Rush are big names. And it’s by the same producer as Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’ll take off and people will think there’s a market for my stories. I was very hopeful when “Forbidden Kingdom” came out with Jet Li and Jackie Chan. *sigh*
I won’t rave until I know more about it, but man do I wish I had been querying Butterfly Swords the year that “Crouching Tiger” hit the screens.
Victoria was the first person ever to ask my guest blog! She’s a fellow historical romance author who writes for Harlequin Spice. I was giddy to be invited to blog anywhere. Usually I just ramble on over here.
I’m on her blog today discussing research, my muses and feminism in the Tang dynasty as well as historical romances in general. Hop on over if you have a chance. How did I sound? Too stuffy?
I was going to put “Asian fantasy” in the title, but then I had visions of people coming here searching for a XXX site—ugh.
I got a note from a reader who told me they’ve been searching for this sort of book forever and there’s not much out there. She had been going through search engines looking for Asian fantasy stories. It’s not the first letter I’ve gotten like that either. Each one makes me hopeful. For an unpublished writer to start getting fan mail, and not from friends who love me, that must mean something right?
It was a big boost when I found an agent who was excited to go to bat for me. We’re still on that search for the editor who believes that these stories will sell. Funny how much of an uphill battle it is to get into English language genre fiction when there’s a flood of movies, manga, anime and centuries of Asian language literature on the same themes.
Once in a while when I’m feeling blue and lonely, I do go googling for Asian fantasy fiction or wuxia. But that’s okay. I knew this was going to be hard when I started. I just have to keep improving the writing.
So if you’re out there. If you’re searching too and you’ve found me. Say hello. *waves*
I truly believe there is a market and I love these stories. I’m very stubborn and somewhat patient and there’s enough stories in this genre to last another couple centuries.
Seventeen year old Ai Ling discovers a new gift on the day that her arranged marriage falls apart. She can enter another being’s spirit and hear their thoughts. In the aftermath of the scandal, her father disappears on a journey to the Palace of Fragrant Dreams.
As Ai Ling sets out on a journey to find her father and bring him home, she meets up with two brothers, Chen Yong and Li Rong. Chen Yong is of mixed blood, part Xian and part foreigner, and he’s on a quest of his own to discover the history of his parents, kept secret all these years. The three travel together, encountering demons and mystical creatures, while Ai Ling’s powers grow. With each new obstacle, it becomes clearer and clearer that there are powerful forces working against them and that somehow, Ai Ling and Chen Yong’s fates have been twined together by events that happened before they were born.
Silver Phoenix is a spectacularly vivid journey. The Kingdom of Xia parallels medieval China where the lines of the spirit world have become blurred. Ms. Pon’s descriptions are colorful and imaginative. Her characters hitch a ride on a dragon and fly to the land of the Immortals where she pulls from Chinese mythology and iconography to create a view of the heavens never seen before. The demons are suitable grotesque and originally depicted.
In the tradition of Asian heroic fiction, the villians and allies that Ai Ling meets along the way are complex beings. No one is truly good, no one is truly evil. The arch villian Zhong Ye has a touch of humanity that cannot be denied. The seemingly benign Immortals lead the heros into disaster.
What starts out as a fun, fanciful journey through Xia, full of exotic food and magical adventure, evolves by the end into a rich emotional exploration of the depths of honor, spiritual debt, and destiny. I can see where the bittersweet nature of the story at times may be unsettling to Western readers who are used to happy endings, but I found it refreshing that once Ai Ling is back in her home, we truly get a sense of her growth through the epic journey we have experienced with her and feel her yearning for the adventures yet to come. Cindy Pon and Silver Phoenix do justice to the wuxia tradition.
Visit Cindy Pon’s page. There’s a release contest and a lucky winner will receive an original Cindy Pon brush painting as well as a signed copy of the book.
I’m totally thrilled that I’ve been invited to join the 
Everyone is doing conference wrap-ups. I wish I had enough time to focus enough to get my thoughts together. Not to mention grabbing pictures from everyone! So excuse this mish-mosh of a conference vignette. Please know it’s a good representation of what’s in my head right now. Hey, take a gander at the stage setup for the RITA/GH® awards. It really is like the Academy Awards of romance!
Highlight of my conference? The moment that really made it hit home for me was telling Jade Lee about my sale. Jade is one of my favorite authors and an inspiration to me. I even brought my copy of The Concubine with me to get signed. (I’m wearing a Jade Lee tiger T-shirt now as I type!) A couple of friends got me a picture with her after the awards ceremony.
